Jess (Zooey Deschanel) falls out of a car while on the job at a car show on "New Girl."

Jess (Zooey Deschanel) falls out of a car while on the job at a car show on "New Girl."

Photo: Greg Gayne

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The women in "The Newsroom" are always in danger of falling over. (Credit:Melissa Moseley)

The women in "The Newsroom" are always in danger of falling over. (Credit:Melissa Moseley)

Photo: Melissa Moseley

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Lucille Ball's character, Lucy Ricardo, was zany and sometimes awkward, but she would never fall off a bed. (Credit: Dan Powers)

Lucille Ball's character, Lucy Ricardo, was zany and sometimes awkward, but she would never fall off a bed. (Credit: Dan Powers)

Photo: Dan Powers

Hollywood stumbles in making funny women clumsy

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Last week on "30 Rock," the episode of the comedy ended with the great Tina Fey, as Liz Lemon, alone and in a pink tutu, suddenly falling off her bed. In the promos for this week's "The New Girl," Zooey Deschanel's character is seen stumbling and slipping in high heels in her job as an auto-show model.

On HBO's recent season of "The Newsroom," every single major female character was at risk, minute to minute, of toppling over, running into a glass door or accidentally maiming a co-worker.

And of course we await, with more dread than anticipation, the upcoming debut of the fifth - or maybe 75th - movie in the (not intentionally comedic) "Twilight" series. In the ridiculously popular "Twilight" books, the heroine Bella Swan is defined, almost exclusively, by her almost pathological clumsiness.

Clumsy women are everywhere, at least on TV and in movies, and it's been going on for years. Think of Kristen Wiig in "Bridesmaids" or Amy Adams in "Leap Year" - or any of 50 other examples.

This is Tad Friend, writing about women in comedy last year in the New Yorker: "So funny women must not only be gorgeous; they must fall down and then sob, knowing it's all their fault." His article, about the comic actor Anna Faris, is fair about women's sexism issues in Hollywood, but it also observes that Faris seems to be the kind of woman who is clumsy not only on screen but in real life. Really?

The website tvtropes.org has even devoted extensive research into finding the stereotype of the "cute clumsy girl" in everything from novels to anime to TV and movies.

Was it always like this? I don't think so, though sexism was rife in other ways. Remember, it was Dick Van Dyke who tripped over the ottoman every week, and Mary Tyler Moore's character was a highly put-together former dancer. Lucy Ricardo, yes, but more awkward and zany than truly clumsy. She might set her fake nose on fire, but she would never fall off the bed.

Oh, but this makes these women more "relatable," you might say. Can't you see that this is simply funny?

I grant you that sometimes it's simply funny. I think about the scene - last year, I think - in which Fey's "30 Rock" character tried to change the huge water bottle on the water cooler. Yeah, that was pretty funny.

Also inaccurate. The woman in my office who changes the water-cooler bottle does so in an utterly no-nonsense manner. She's strong and focused, and it's no big deal.

That's the problem. I'm not blaming men at all, though I'm sure Hollywood is grossly sexist. Fey, Wiig, "Twilight" author Stephenie Meyer - these are women in charge of their own work.

The problem isn't that it's sexist, though it is. Women, even self-aware ones such as Fey and Wiig, are completely capable of reflexive sexism.

The problem is it's wrong. In fact, the only clumsy woman I know is me. Yesterday, I fell off a bike. Standing still.

The women I know, from work or friendship or family ties, aren't like this. They run marathons, dance, hike, chase babies, bike 50 or 80 miles on a Sunday. They're strong, and not just physically.